Mobile location specific computing is made possible by the availability of small, fast and wireless hand-held processing devices equipped with location identification capabilities. Examples of location identification services may include compass-related functions (i.e., latitude and longitude based location tools) and GPS receivers with additional capabilities such as distance and time-related calculations used to arrive at a desired target location.
Mobile communications systems implement location-specific add-on features that include various different location estimation techniques, such as, E-OTD (Enhanced Observed Time Difference), FOTA (Forced Timing Advance), TA (Timing Advance), TDOA (Time Difference Of Arrival) and TOA (Time Of Arrival) etc.
Hybrid systems are also used by mobile communications systems that incorporate a conventional location method, such as, those mentioned above, and which also rely on satellite-based location systems, such as, GPS (Global Positioning System) or Galileo. These types of systems may offer more accurate location services or other advanced location features.
Broadcast cellular systems may also be combined with GPS in mobile environments to provide location-specific services to mobile stations. In such combined implementations, normally a central or distributed control site (e.g., Base Station Controller, Mobile Station Controller) determines the requested information content based on the received user request and provides the user with feedback from a database accessible via the mobile network. In this example, an auxiliary channel must be provided between the mobile user receiving device and the control center to provide the location-specific information content to the mobile user.
Broadcast cellular systems are normally only cost effective in very large service areas of hundreds of square miles. As for smaller areas, the use of such a system can hardly be justified for users with specific needs and preferences. For example, users who are limited to a smaller geographical location may have less success when trying to pinpoint a location and provide feedback location information to the network regarding their surroundings.
Currently, the techniques used for location-specific services access a computer network in order to search for a user's desired information. In these types of location service models, data may be retrieved from external data sources, processed for location-related queries and transmitted to the user's portable device. Such a combination of operations may be time consuming and load heavy on system resources. Additionally, such location service models are limited in their ability to offer user selection services. For instance, the user's preferences and involvement (i.e., defining an area of interest) during the execution of a location service application may be limited or non-existent altogether.
In addition to general conventional location services for mobile users, there are also known ways to track the movement or gestures made by a user of a wireless transmitting device. For example, a sensing device may be used for determining and measuring linear and/or arc movements of a human body by an accelerometer. Sensing and transmitting data related to movements of a human body may be accomplished by sending the data by a wireless transmitter of the user's device to other electrical peripheral devices, which enables the user to interact with those electrical peripheral devices in a multimedia fashion.
Accelerometers and other signal processing devices may track user movement and provide real-time updated user movement via an electronic transmitting device. Furthermore, the location specific needs of users of wireless terminals may be handled faster and with more detailed precision if the application servers are fully aware of the user's location between location information transfers between the user device and the application servers.